Friday, October 21, 2011

Books: "How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom", by Garry Kasparov

Life is ruled by strategies. Our future depends on the decisions we make today and the present is shaped by moves from the past. It`s almost like chess, but much more complicated. Therefore I enjoyed the book "How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom", by Garry Kasparov (first edition 2007 amazon.com). The former world champion in chess (from 1985 until 2000) writes about his career and chess, but also about strategies in business, politics, military and daily life, therefore about "strategy and the art of living", the title of the German edition (Garri Kasparow: Strategie und die Kunst zu leben www.amazon.de).

The book is very smart and intriguingly written, as you can expect from a long time world champion in this smart game. Kasparov`s writing shows the stringency he needed to rule the game such a long time. The Russian master describes how he discovered his own weaknesses, and how he learned to delete or at least to alter them and to gain strength. He concluded that to be successful one had to ask "why" things happen. This separates the strategist from the tactician, who just reacts (maneuvers). The successful strategist uses his knowledge about the nature of people to predict the strategies of the enemy and to counteract.

One of the strengths of the book is that the author uses a lot of historical examples from politics, military and business. Kasparov describes how politicians like Clinton, Churchill, Bismarck or entrepreneurs like Boeing, Watson (IBM) and Welch (General Electric) succeeded or failed. These examples make his arguments more lively and more remarkable.

I got also the message that taking the initiative, meaning to be a bit more aggressive, is the way to success. Kasparov himself is famous for his aggressive way of playing chess and is now an ambitious Russian opposition politician.

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